Reflections on the Decreasing Affordability of Legal Education

This Article offers two different lenses for thinking about the “affordability” of legal education. Part I discusses a historical perspective focused on aggregated data over time: average tuition in relation to average salaries of law school graduates. Part II discusses a present day perspective, estimating the percentage of Class of 2011 graduates for whom legal education might be considered affordable using a formula drawing on debt-to-income ratios associated with mortgages. Part III discusses the extent to which affordability may vary among public and private law schools, law schools in different states or regions, and for students with different LSAT and GPA profiles. Part IV concludes with a discussion of some of the challenges legal education will face as a result of legal education’s decreasing affordability

Good Faith and the Discharge of Educational Loans in Chapter 13: Forging a Judicial Consensus

In the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 19781 Congress sought to accomplish many goals, some of which appear internally incompatible. For example, Congress enacted section 523(a)(8) to limit the dischargeability of educational loans in Chapter 7 liquidations. At the same time, however, Congress enacted the new Chapter 13 to encourage consumer debtors--including student borrowers--to elect repayment plans whenever feasible. Chapter 13 contains a superdischarge provision, which offers debtors a much broader discharge than the discharge that is available under section 523(a) in straight bankruptcy. While section 523(a)(8) excepts educational loans from discharge, section 1328(a) of Chapter 13 does not except them from discharge.This Article examines the tension that seems to exist between these two Bankruptcy Code provisions. Part II discusses the nature of federal educational loan programs. Part III reviews the legislative history of section 523(a)(8) to evaluate Congress\u27 intent and purpose. Part III then inspects the history and operation of section 1328(a), Chapter 13\u27s super discharge provision, to see whether the two sections are reconcilable. Part IV analyzes recent decisions that attempt to reconcile these two code provisions through the good faith requirement of section 1325(a). Part V considers the appropriateness of excepting educational loans from discharge in bankruptcy. Part V concludes that a court asked to confirm a re-payment plan that will result in the discharge of educational loans best serves Congress\u27 purposes by analyzing the totality of circumstances when making an inquiry into the good faith of a pro-posed plan. Finally, part V discusses the way recent congressional legislation implements the totality of circumstances test

Net Tuition Trends by LSAT Category from 2010 to 2014 with Thoughts on Variable Return on Investment

The “macro” discussion of legal education highlights that law school is expensive. This general point fails to highlight the extent to which differences exist at a “micro” level due both to geography and LSAT profile. First, some regions of the country are more expensive than others. Second, where one is on the LSAT distribution profile influences the average net tuition because of scholarship patterns associated with institutional efforts to preserve or improve ranking. As a result, law school is not equally expensive across the entire LSAT distribution. This article begins in Section I by briefly summarizing the geographic differences in tuition, which are not insignificant. Then, in Section II, this article briefly describes a dynamic net tuition model I developed for calculating net tuition trends by LSAT category and describes the results of that dynamic net tuition model. The results demonstrate that the variability of average net tuition by LSAT category increased significantly between 2010 and 2014 after accounting for inflation, with two LSAT categories seeing increases of 9.1% and 11.9% and four seeing decreases ranging from 2.8% to 13%. Section III looks at various outcome measures—specifically, bar passage rates, “bad news” employment outcomes, and imputed average first-year income—and demonstrates that, on average, the short-term return on investment varies significantly depending upon where someone is in the LSAT distribution. Section IV concludes with some thoughts on what this might mean for prospective law students and for law school